In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at the death of a local Confederate veteran, the possibility of Glover Park being bulldozed for a parking garage and the sale of the Cobb County Recreation Center in Kennesaw to the Pinetree Country Club.

100 years ago …

On the front page of the Friday, Nov. 15, 1912 Marietta Journal and Courier had a story about the death of Alex Gann, a Cobb County native born in 1846. Gann was just a boy when he entered the Civil War with Lee’s Battalion. He was later discharged with the cavalry at Macon. After the war, he returned to Cobb and settled in Smyrna.

Another front page story in that week’s edition reported that Ensign King Awtrey of Marietta had sent a telegram to his parents telling them that he had been transferred to the battleship Tennessee, which was sailing to the scene of war between the nations of Serbia and Turkey. The Tennessee was to protect Americans who lived in Turkey.

50 years ago …

The Cobb Advisory Board in the Monday, Nov. 12, 1962 MDJ was expected to meet and take up proposals to fireproof the courthouse. Marietta Fire Inspector Capt. Bartow Adair said that the courthouse needed a sprinkler system, a fire escape leading from the rear of the second floor to the ground and a changing of the doors so that they opened outward.

The City of Marietta in the Tuesday, Nov. 13, 1962 paper was reported as having the authority to implement a citizens’ committee recommendation that Glover Park in the Marietta Square be replaced with a two-level business and vehicle parking building.

City Clerk Al Bagley said a 1953 amendment to the city charter gave the mayor and council power to appoint a three-man Parking Authority. The 40-member Citizen’s Advisory Committee’s plan called for erecting a building with the lower level for lease to businesses and the upper level for parking of cars on the entire block that was occupied by the public park.

Those plans were obviously not put into motion, since Glover Park is still standing today.

In the Friday, Nov. 16, 1962 paper, a group of Atlanta investors bought the 600-acre Cobb County Recreation Center near Kennesaw for nearly $1.4 million. Plans were to convert it into a private country club of about 1,000 members by 1963. Jesse Draper, president of Pinetree Corp., said that a $250,000 clubhouse would be built along with tennis courts.

The Rec Center – which included an 18-hole golf course and a swimming pool – was being sold because it had been operating in the red since opening in June 1960.

20 years ago …

Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard said in the Tuesday, Nov. 10, 1992 MDJ that he would make term limits for state legislators and top state officials the cornerstone of his legislative package for 1993, but he backpedaled on an earlier proposal to also mandate term limits for Georgia congressmen. Howard’s comments were made during the state Chamber of Commerce’s Pre-Legislature Forum and drew support from several Cobb legislators.

Also, that day, the Cobb commissioners were reported as set to begin searching through dusty files that once belonged to the late Ernest Barrett for potentially sensitive information on people still working for the county. Barrett, who was the commission chairman from 1965-1984, died a few months after he left office.

After his death, his secretary dated the cardboard boxes of papers for destruction in 1992. Instead of destroying the papers, the county sent them to Kennesaw State College’s history department to be kept in a rare-books room for students to research the important time period of extreme rapid growth in both population and economic development in Cobb.

However, when the commission learned that the boxes contained personnel files, original property records and sealed envelopes, they were quickly taken back to the county clerk’s office.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Damon's articles on the MDJ Time Capsule. Keep up the good work! - Carol

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